


where the horizon ends

by interestinggin



Category: Firefly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bonnie & Clyde, Alternate Universe - Criminals, F/M, Sibling Incest, in which Serenity is a cadillac car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 21:19:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon can hardly drive, and River might be mad, but there's a sky and a highway and for now they're still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where the horizon ends

**Author's Note:**

> You should definitely read Sherod Santos' fantastic poem '[Near the Desert Test Sites](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171915)' if you want some background on this fic, which was written for the Americana meme on Livejournal.
> 
> Warning for incest, and heavy references to mental illness.

_unlike almost everything_  
_else just surviving here_  
_in summer, poison flowers_  
_flourish in this sweltering_  
_heat, tangling like blown_  
_litter in fences around_  
_the trailer parks and motel_  
_pools --_

 

Simon has a beaten Cadillac that he’s terrible at driving, that had no scratches when he bought it and now looks like a wreck. River drives like she dances; mad and unpredictable and with a grace that’s almost divine. When he’s too tired from all the endless watches of the night, he climbs over into the backseat and tries to catch a few hours’ shut-eye while she takes the wheel and hums jazz melodies to herself that nobody ever wrote.

They’ve been on the run for two years, and Simon still can’t fire a pistol properly, but River can break a man’s skull with her fists.

 

They live out of take-out cartons and diner breakfasts, mostly. Simon longs for freshly brewed coffee and grapefruit and home, but there’s no point going anywhere that they might be recognised. They may not have made the newspapers, but the authorities know their faces right enough.

There was a period, a few years back, when they were touted as bank robbers in some pointless attempt to flush them out. They’d stayed out of towns for a bit and headed south, where no-one cared anyway.

“They think that we’re poisonous,” River had sighed. “They’re wrong. Snakes don’t bite unless you startle them. We ought to teach them a lesson. Eat their eggs.”

“We are not becoming bank robbers, River,” he’d said, gently but firmly.

She had tangled a finger in his hair, raised both eyebrows, and whispered with chapped lips so close to his ear that her tongue touched skin. “You’re the world’s most boring wanted man,” she’d sighed.

He’d gripped her wrists a little too tightly, and pulled her in for a kiss.

“Hey,” he’d said, when they pulled away with flushed cheeks, “that’s rich. I’m your saviour, remember?”

“Surely do,” she’d whispered, hitching her skirt up round her legs to show him smooth skin beneath, and marvelling at the way his breath caught in his throat every time, at the way he twitched in fear before tentatively reaching forward to cup her.

She’d smiled as he slid his fingers inside her, curling them just so, and let out a howl that made him shudder in shame and delight.

 

River gets caught up in staring at the sidewalk and the steam from the asphalt, watching birds that aren't there, seeing horrors and dreams, while Simon pays in petty change for newspapers with their names in and a gallon of cheap gas.

Everyone has a secret.

Everyone has a secret until they meet River.

 

They introduce themselves as newlyweds, more for cover than for illicit purposes – if they’re looking for siblings, a couple attracts less attention. Simon’s got less hair now, cropped close to his scalp, and he wears his red shades when they’re out and about. River ties hers up under a scarf, all Audrey Hepburn class with none of the stillness, and refuses to be a tragic heroine.

When they get to motels, they find the rooms that stink of sin and stains, the heat peeling the wallpaper, and sit on the balcony flicking cigarette butts in the pool. It’s too hot to do anything else – far too hot to run. He drinks cold beers because she’s not old enough. Simon – training still a part of him – tells her not to smoke, that she'll make herself ill. She tells him not to interfere and flicks ash at his sleeves.

He’ll make her pay for that.

 

The Tams are wanted for crimes against the state; they’re vicious killers; they’re hijackers and terrorists and con-artists. They have mugshots on milk cartons that don’t show River’s gleeful smile nor the lines round Simon’s eyes, and they screech across state lines at ninety miles per hour to escape from their own demons.

River wants rain, bucketing down, to soak her cotton dress to the skin and make her shiver, and it isn’t coming yet.

 

“You don’t –” he gasps into her shoulder, her slender legs wrapped round him as he holds her up against a cardboard wall, one of thousands, “don’t have to do this, River, you don’t have to – ”

She holds his head in her hands and swallows all his protests with open mouth and flushing cheeks.

“My brother,” she says with relish and a filthy buck of her hips, “silly brother, Simon, I love you.”

He groans at how hard that absolutely should not make him, buries his trembling head in her shoulder with teeth and lips, and takes her right to oblivion.

 

Never let it be forgotten that they are fugitives – they don’t drop their guard, not once, not for an instant. River wants to go dancing, and Simon says no. They go anyway, but he keeps his eyes on the room and when they run into the town sheriff at the bar he grabs her arm, squeezes once – code blue – and they make a hasty departure.

Simon misses Manhattan most days. He says he longs for the lights and the job and warm beds, but really he just misses the hum beneath his feet of a city always moving so that he could stand still. And knowing he was helping. River likes no bonds, likes the desert and boundless plains that never end. On warm nights on long empty freeways she stands up through the car skylight and throws up her arms to the stars.

 

Sometimes there are bad days. She curls up on motel beds and screams if he tries to touch her; makes slitting motions across her throat with her hand and speaks only in prime numbers. Simon is still trying to work out what triggers these; a Doberman barking or a cheap beer; a long silence; a fight. On these days, Simon sits in silence with his hands on his knees through his slacks and looks at the wall until she whispers his name and holds out a hand for him to take.

He’d save her a thousand times again if he could and die for her each day.

 

She fights like she fucks, and she fucks like it shouldn’t be allowed.

Which it shouldn’t.

He knows that, he does.

But nothing about this is fair.

 

He doesn’t know that she can see the spiders in his hair. They weave webs over his eyes and scuttle up and down his neck, and he doesn’t even stir to brush them off. Her big brother, River decides, is utterly ridiculous.

She wraps her arms around his neck in bed that night.

“Mei-mei," he murmurs, a nickname they cannot remember the origin of, "River, I’m trying to sleep.”

“Simon,” she says softly, because it is the safest word she knows. He raises one hand to lazily stroke her hair, and the warmth in his sleepy voice is entirely and always love.

“Yes, River,” he says with fondness, “I’m here. I’m always here.”

“Not always,” she says, calmly laying her head on his chest and closing her eyes. “Not that long at all.”

 

They’ll go down together, a glorious last stand, if they ever go down at all. They are a thousand runaways without a name and a thousand babes on the run, and they are something altogether new.

River knows that they were never meant to be here, but this is where they are. Sometimes she pinches him to see if he will wake up and feel suffocated by the black. At least here the sky may be baking, but it doesn’t try to drown you.

They draw circles in the dusk with the battered old Cadillac that River calls Serenity, and screech off into the sunset, and don’t die just yet. And for a poison girl on borrowed time, that just might be enough.

 

\-- _and every_

_evening slow-dissolves_

_on the blue and otherwise_

_planetary hills, like a valium_

_breaking up on the tongue._


End file.
